Paper presented by Martine Derivry & Kristi Jauregi at the AILA World Congress held in Brisbane, 10-15 August 2014.

1. European Language Teachers’ beliefs on
Intercultural Communicative Competence
Kristi Jauregi Ondarra (Fontys University of Applied
Sciences & Utrecht University)
Martine Derivry-Plard (University of Paris 6)

2. TILA: Telecollaboration for
Intercultural language Acquisition
(2013-2015)

3. Project goals
• (1) to innovate, enrich and make foreign language teaching
programmes more attractive and effective by encouraging the
implementation of telecollaboration activities in secondary schools
across Europe;
• (2) to empower teachers and innovate teacher training programmes
in order to assist them in developing ICT literacy skills as well as
organisational, pedagogical and intercultural competences to
guarantee adequate integration of telecollaboration practices; and
• (3) to study the added value that telecollaboration may bring to
language learning in terms of intercultural understanding and
motivation amongst younger learners and pedagogic competence
development. 3

4. Partners
4

5. Consortium Partners
5
P3 U Roehampton (UK)
P4 The Godolphin & Latymer School
P1 Utrecht University (NL)
P2 Berlage Lyceum
P11 3DLES (NL)
P12 Palacky University (CZ)
P5 Steinbeis Transfer Center Language Learning Media
P6 Gymnasium Saarburg (DE)
P9 Université de Paris 3 and Paris 6 (FR)
P10 Collège La Cerisaie
P7 Universidad de Valencia (SP)
P8 IES Clot del Moro

6. 42 associate partners
Synchronous and asynchronous
telecollaboration tools
6

7. Activities undertaken
• Analysis of teachers’ needs
• Development of teacher training
modules and
• Teacher training sessions
• Telecollaboration pilots
7
http://www.tilaproject.eu
https://www.youtube.com/user/TILAprojectEU
http://ec.europa.eu/languages/inspire/tila-project_en.htm
EuroALL 2013

8. Intercultural telecollaboration
within a learning/teaching and research environment
Target
languages
Researchers
Teacher
Trainers
Teachers
Target
Cultures
Learners

9. TILA : an intercultural learning environment
9
6 research institutions providing
2 running modes
6 „national“ cultures
6 educational systems
teacher training
5 target languages
 Tandems : language reciprocity
 Lingua Franca: a communicative
language mediating 2 target cultures
Challenges
 languages are associated with target cultures
(Usually Tandems ie French learners with English learners)
AND
 Languages are dissociated with target cultures
(Usually Lingua Franca ie French learners with Dutch learners using
ELF or German as a Lingua Franca or Spanish as a lingua franca)

11. Organising telecollaboration among
teachers : two major challenges
• Use of technology in the classroom, the availability and
appropriateness of the facilities, and technical assistance have
been addressed in a former paper :
• Jauregi, K., Melchor-Couto, S., & Vilar Beltrán, E. (2013). The European Project TILA. In
L. Bradley & S. Thouësny (Eds.), 20 Years of EUROCALL: Learning from the Past,
Looking to the Future. Proceedings of the 2013 EUROCALL Conference, Évora, Portugal
(pp. 123-128)
• Facilitating intercultural telecollaboration, creating a third
culture for teachers with different teaching cultures to work
together on task planning and task development is going to be
explored.

12. Research
Who are TILA teachers?
What are the views of teachers concerning
intercultural telecollaboration?
• Methodology: ethnographic (multimodal with questionnaires,
interviews, analysis of task descriptions, online interaction …) :
another challenge for ethnography to be online.
• PILOTS (From December to May 2014)
• 2 questionnaires
• Background questionnaire : 15 respondents
• Teachers’ views on telecollaboration for intercultural language
learning : 21 respondents
• Semi-structured Interviews (6 teachers)

13. Teachers’ background
• 70 % female teachers and 30%
male teachers
• experience (0-4 years) to more
than 25 years
• Master’s degree and usually a
teaching license. 90 % work in
state secondary school.
• Their learners are from 12 to 18.
• They teach one language or 2
languages or up to 3 subjects
• 80% have worked in a foreign
country where they have taught
• Lack of support for computer
technologies and Internet .
15 respondents
6 from France
5 from Spain
2 from NL
1 from Germany
1 from the UK

14. Teachers have a pluricultural capital
• 80 % have worked in a foreign country , mainly in Europe (except for the
USA and Vietnam) from less than a year to more than 5 years
• 80 % have taught in a foreign country mainly in Europe (except for North
America) from 1 to more than 10 years
• 50% have French as their first language, others have German, Spanish, Dutch
and Catalan. Just one teacher considers to be bilingual French/English
• 60% teach English, then French, German and Spanish for 13% respectively
and then Catalan
Their trajectories are coherent with their studies as they have studied languages
as a major for their degrees with academic relevance (American Studies, British
history, English literature, English studies, English philology, German Literature,
Didactics of French and Foreign languages)
Studies in languages,
teaching languages abroad and at home

15. TILA teachers How
intercultural
is your
school?
Intercultural competence is an important strudent outcome ++
The intercultural dimension is a priority ++
Partnerships abroad are encouraged +
Colleagues develop partnerships =
Colleagues are willing to get a Language assistant ++
Language assistant are easy to get -
School support intercultural exchanges
-
Colleagues support intercultural exchanges

16. TILA teachers
open and willing to explore
intercultural dimensions
However teaching activities that are most important are :
• 1/ Speaking (53%)
• 2/ Listening and Reading (33% each item)
• 3/ Vocabulary (26%)
• 4/ Culture and Intercultural dimensions (21% each item)
• 5/ Writing (13%)

17. Teachers’ views on the
intercultural dimension
21 respondents to questionnaire
(French & English teachers in Spain, English
teacher, Spanish and German teachers in
France)

18. Teachers’ views on the
intercultural dimension
of TILA
• For Learners
• TILA is ranked 1 (60%) for motivation, and 2 for interactions
and communication (55%) and 3 for Intercultural skills (45%).
• For teachers
• TILA is ranked 1 (40%) for allowing teachers to innovate, then
2 for developing collaboration with teachers from other
countries and developing ICT skills (35%) and 3 for enriching
intercultural competence (30%).

19. Teachers’ views on the
intercultural dimension
Motivation and
the intercultural
dimension are
linked (100%)
Adaptability is
important
(100%)
Learners are
interested in
learning about
other cultures
(85%)
Intercultural and
cultural dimensions
are priorities in the
language and school
curriculum (80%)
Empathy with
others is
important (90%)

20. Teachers’ views on
Intercultural Communicative
Competence (ICC)
• ICC should be developed due to increasing
internationalisation of the world (95%)
• ICC is part of developing intercultural
citizenship and teachers should be trained
(90%)

21. Teachers’ views on
intercultural practices
• ICC is about developing attitudes such as curiosity, openness,
readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief
about one’s own. It is about relating to Self and Other and
about cultural awareness of differences and similarities (95%)
• ICC is about developing cultural knowledge about one’s own
and one’s interlocutor’s cultures (100%)
• ICC is providing information about daily life and routines
(living conditions, traditions..) (95%)
• ICC is providing knowledge and experience of a variety of
cultural expressions (Literature, music, theatre, film..) (90%)

22. Teachers’ views on
intercultural practices
• ICC facilitates good language learning and teaching,
communicative skills and positive attitudes towards people
from different cultures (85%)
• The native speaker is a good model for learners (75%)
BUT/AND
• The intercultural speaker is a good model for learners (79%)
• ICC is about class collaboration between N/NN speakers (TILA
Tandems) (95%)
BUT /AND
• ICC is about class collaboration between NN speakers of
different countries (TILA lingua franca) (80%)

23. Conclusion
• The Intercultural dimension is a priority for TILA teachers
• It relates to attitudes, knowledge and skills
• It is also linked to motivating young learners in secondary schools
• It is facilitated by technology in conjunction with tasks
• Telecollaboration is seen as a powerful way to innovate in Foreign
language teaching

24. 24
Join us in TILA!
tila@uu.nl
www.tilaproject.eu
@tilaproject
www.scoop.it/tila
Thank you!
Martine Derivry
Kristi Jauregi